


5 First Meetings

by haledamage



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Implied Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 06:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17678507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haledamage/pseuds/haledamage
Summary: Kai and Aloth's lives have run parallel much longer than either of them realize. 5 times they've met plus one true reunion.





	5 First Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! things have been hectic, it's taken me like 8 months to write this, but I hope to start writing more consistently again! I think I started this for a prompt challenge, but I'm not sure. I'll update if I figure it out.

1.

Iorena had long lost count of how many days, weeks, _months_ she'd been running. She could still feel Thaos's eyes on her back even here, so far away from Engwith, could hear his voice in her sleep when she would succumb to exhaustion.

She had to keep running. If she stopped, he'd find her again.

Her knees gave out, too weak to keep walking, and she was too tired to catch herself. The mud felt cool on her fevered skin and she was almost tempted to stay awhile and rest in the cool soft earth.

A breeze whispered by, setting the tall grass around her swaying, and it felt like hot needles as it brushed the angry wounds on her back. Can't stop here. Had to keep moving.

It seemed like hours passed as she forced herself up onto her elbows, even longer to get her knees under her again. She sat up, finally, covered in sweat and breathing hard from the effort.

The cold steel suddenly at her throat wasn't a surprise. The voice behind it was.

"Wha th' fuck are ye 'n' why're ye in mah wheat?" The voice was somehow sharp and lilting at the same time, like an angry silver bell.

Iorena's voice was neither as strong or as sweet, rusty and harsh from weeks of disuse. "I'm sorry, my lady. I was just passing through."

The blade at her throat retreated and part of her was disappointed. She pushed that part down. She didn't need its meddling.

She risked turning to face the voice and found it belonged to someone every bit as sharp and lovely as she sounded. She was a tiny elven woman with sun-dark skin and messy, mousy hair. 

Her bird-black eyes flitted over Iorena, taking in her torn clothes and unwashed hair, the mud, the seeping lash wounds across her back. "Who're ye runnin’ fae, lass? Did yer auld man dae that tae ye? Yer guidman?"

Iorena shook her head, the motion making her head swim. The woman's eyes somehow got even sharper, and then she was in Iorena's face, though she never saw her move. She took her chin in her hand, tilting her this way and that as if looking for something in particular. "When's th' lest time ye ate, lass?"

"I don't know," she rasped.

"C'moan. Lemme git ye a bath 'n' fairn, aye? Dinnae hae muckle, bit tis better than kippin’ in th' mud." It clearly wasn't a question, her hospitality every bit as pointed as the rest of her.

She hooked an arm under Iorena's and pulled her to her feet. She was more than a head shorter, but practically carried Iorena towards a small nearby house without any visible effort. "Ahm Iselmyr."

She met Iselmyr's sharp, kind eyes and felt her face stretch with the first smile in a long, long time. "I'm Ren." It was her sister's nickname for her, but it didn't hurt like she expected it to.

Then exhaustion finally did catch up with her. She felt the world spin, heard a long, colorful string of curses from Iselmyr, and then it was only darkness.

\-------

 

2.

"If I have to have one more forced conversation about the weather or my studies, I'm going to set this house on fire." Akaia muttered sweetly to her sister Arabella. They stood against a far wall, avoiding the eyes of everyone but each other for fear of small talk.

It was the coronation party for a new erl, Akaia was pretty sure. Maybe a thayn? Or did someone graduate from something? It didn't really matter. These parties were all the same.

A tall, handsome, and clearly very rich man walked through the door, flanked by a dark-skinned woman in shining gold and bronze armor. Akaia felt Bella straighten at her side, failing to hide her eagerness at seeing them, and rolled her eyes. "Go on then."

Bella grinned and squeezed her sister's hand. "I think there's a library in the east wing. Try not to burn the place down please."

"No promises."

Akaia watched her sister run off to see her paramour and shook her head. Bella could at least _try_ to be subtle; Mother would be _furious_ if she found out who of the pair Bella was truly excited to see.

She sighed and snuck out of the room, following the lush green carpets along the halls until she found what she thought was the east wing.

She could tell which room must be the library by how few people it had around it. She cast one more quick look around, but there were only two people nearby and they were much too absorbed in each other to notice her. The door barely creaked as she eased it open and squeezed her way inside.

Akaia froze like a startled deer as she turned around to find she wasn't alone. A young elven man stared back at her, pale blue eyes as wide as saucers and full of… fear? Or just shock?

She forced herself into a relaxed posture and gave him what she hoped was a conspiratorial grin. "I should have expected I wouldn't be the only one trying to find a place to hide." He didn't reply and his expression remained wary and guarded as he watched her walk into the room. She chuckled, trying to seem unphased by his staring, and added, "Don't worry, darling, I don't bite."

She pretended to ignore him after that, browsing the stacks for something worth reading. Eventually, he relaxed minutely and the pressure of his gaze left her alone.

She wandered the bookshelves for a bit, scanning titles and authors for something that looked interesting and becoming less enthused as the minutes passed. Business, politics, and mathematics, by themselves and in combinations that made them somehow even worse.

"Berath's Blood, these people are _boring_ ," she muttered. "All their money and they can't afford a damn novel."

A snort of laughter sounded from the sitting area behind her and she grinned over her shoulder. She'd almost forgotten he was there, which was startling in its own way. He was strangely unobtrusive, in a way only her sisters were normally; it had been a long time since Akaia had honestly enjoyed a stranger's company.

She turned away from the disappointing books and nodded toward the tome open in his lap. "What did you find, then?"

"Oh. I… brought it with me." His ears turned red, and he stared at a spot just above her left shoulder instead of meeting her eyes.

Akaia sighed and collapsed onto a love seat across from him in an unladylike heap. "Clever lad. If my mother caught me smuggling a book into a party she'd burn it," bitterness bled into her voice as she spoke. She shook her head to clear it away like cobwebs and smoke and offered him her hand. "I'm Emmethrien."

He paused for a long moment before leaning forward and carefully shaking her hand. "Engferth." It wasn't his real name, she could tell that much, but then she hadn't _really_ given her real name either. At these parties, kith either already knew who you were or you were better off if they didn't.

His handshake was feather light and over almost before it started. He smiled at her, tentative and cautious, and it left Akaia feeling warm in a way she couldn't quite define.

And she never got a chance to. The door slammed open. Akaia jumped, a spell half-primed before she recognized the handsome nobleman from earlier in the party. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Engferth slowly lean to pick up his book where he'd dropped it in surprise.

The lord--Akaia was sure she'd been told his name before, but it escaped her at the moment--spoke in a tense, rapid whisper, "Your mother just walked in. Arabella sent me to find you."

"Shit!" Akaia hissed. She hastily brushed off her skirts and double-checked that her hair wasn't too wild. Mother was supposed to be at a dinner party, 2 days travel in the other direction from their estate.

Lord What's-his-name left the room without another word, and Akaia rushed to follow, but she froze at the door before leaving. She turned back toward the library.

Engferth was staring at her just like he had when she first walked in, eyes wide and startled, book in a white-knuckle grip in his lap. She gave him her best smile, the closest to genuine she was capable of, and bowed slightly. "It was nice to meet you, darling. Let's do this again sometime. Perhaps somewhere with better books."

"I--yes," he stumbled out. He looked like he wanted to say more, but bit it back. She waited a moment, but he stayed quiet so Akaia just winked at him and left.

She rushed down the hall, hoping to find Bella before either of them found Mother.

\-------

 

3.

Akaia felt the spell start to unravel an instant before it flickered and dissipated into acrid smoke. "Dammit!" She kicked the leg of the table and it shrieked a couple inches across the tile floor.

A dry and very unimpressed voice came from somewhere else in the library. "Well done. I'm sure that table had it coming."

"Sorry," she muttered. "I thought I was alone in here."

"As did I," the voice replied. Akaia tried to pinpoint where it was coming from, but it seemed omnipresent, as if it was coming from the library itself.

She leaned back in her chair, addressing the ceiling for lack of other options. "I don't suppose you know much about transmutation, do you? My final is tomorrow and so far all I've managed to do is transmute something from Not-On-Fire to Very-On-Fire."

A sourceless chuckle drifted through the air, sharp but not unkind. When they spoke again, it was closer. "Perhaps. Let's see what you have."

Akaia looked around again. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the shelf nearest her, but she couldn't be sure. Would it be rude to go look for them? She didn't want to scare them off, but she desperately wanted a face to go with the voice.

Instead, she held up her open grimoire, waving it vaguely around the room until the voice made a noise of affirmation.

"You copied that from _Fundamentals of Alchemy_ , didn't you? The version they keep here has a misspelling. The southern rune should be _gyfu_ , not _cēn_."

Akaia looked at her book and laughed. " _Gyfu_. Of course. With _cēn_ there, this is literally a spell of Transmute Conflagration. I swear I'm an _actual_ wizard most days." She shook her head, incredulous and embarrassed.

"Here, try this one," the voice said, and a book near Akaia's head slid a little bit out of the stacks toward her. She took it and leaned down to look in the newly made gap between books.

A pale blue eye stared back at her. It crinkled at the corner, as if its owner was smiling at her. "Who are you?" The question escaped unbidden, a desperate whisper across the narrow space.

"I'm not anyone of import," the voice said as the eye disappeared from view. "As soon as you leave, you'll forget this ever happened."

Akaia doubted that. She was already sad at the idea that this mysterious voice, with its dry wit and pleasant laugh, wouldn't be there to point out her obvious magical shortcomings in the future. She rather wanted to keep them around.

She didn't say any of that, much as she wanted to. Instead, she just stood up, clutching the gifted book to her chest. "Thank you," she said softly.

There was no response. With a sigh and one last long look at the shelves, she left the library to return to her dorm.

\-------

 

4.

Kai didn't know how long she'd been walking when she finally stumbled into something resembling civilization. She regretted it almost immediately. The whispers were louder as soon as she crossed into the city limits. The shadows flickered with color like fish in a dark pond. Something touched her hair and she flinched away from it.

She just needed to get somewhere safe enough to sleep. Safe enough to _think_.

Instead, she was greeted by the sneering magistrate's veiled threats and the hanging tree's more overt ones. She tried hard to ignore to creaks of the tree as she moved past, all that death reaching for her like a flower towards the sun.

She moved away from it, fighting the urge to run as her vision bled purple, and careened right into the middle of a fight.

Three kith, smelling heavily like alcohol and aggression, stood facing a lone cloaked and seemingly unarmed figure. She felt the exact moment that the potential for violence warped, shifted to include her too.

Placations flowed out of her mouth on autopilot, only half aware of what she was saying, but at the first hint of her Aedyr accent it was clear that this would only end one way. When the cloaked figure briefly found their spine and stepped forward, angry Hylspeak from their lips like a bullet from a gun, it was clear this would also end _quickly_.

Kai stepped between the cloaked figure and the three drunken swords. They were probably a head taller than her if they stood straight, but hunched as they were again after their outburst, they could hide behind her if need be. Fire came to her fingers as easy as it ever did; when the attack came, she would be ready.

The cloaked stranger called ice as Kai called fire and it was all over as quickly as it began.

A wave of dizziness washed over her as exhaustion reasserted itself. She must have stumbled; the stranger, hood finally fallen away, caught her with a steady hand on her shoulder. He looked as surprised as she was that he'd done so.

He was talking, his voice sweet yet dry like a good wine but his words lost under the whispers. She tried to answer as best she could until finally something cut through the fog. A name. "Aloth Corfiser, at your service."

"Kai Cirdani. Pleasure to meet you." Kai was thrilled to find she meant it.

His handshake was firm, if brief, and left her on steadier ground than she'd been before.

He asked her why she was here. She surprised them both by telling the truth. He surprised them both by offering to travel with her anyway.

He surprised her again by still being there when she woke up.

\-------

 

5.

There were many things Kai expected to find as she followed Eothas's trail of destruction into the luminous adra mine. Not listed among those was a cage full of animancers. 

Definitely not among those was _her boyfriend_.

Aloth stood at the back of the group and a little off to the side. To these animancers, he probably looked aloof, maybe even bored, but Kai saw the tension in his arms, his hands balled into tight fists, the way his eyes kept glancing at her face and away again.

The distance between them was there so he didn't break his cover. She tried not to look too smug about it.

She went through the motions with the woman who seemed to be in charge - 'we're here to help', 'Watcher of Caed Nua', 'what do you need?', Kai'd been doing this long enough that it was almost a script she followed. The animancers were quick to volunteer Aloth to help, which saved her the trouble of making up an excuse to steal him away.

The animancers approached her and started introducing themselves and Kai tried to hold on to all the names as they were thrown at her, but she saw Aloth finally step forward and she nearly forgot the others were even there.

He stood just a little closer than was proper, close enough that she could see the war in his eyes as Iselmyr simmered near the surface. That would be a Hel of a way to break his cover, she mused, but all that happened was him taking another step forward. She saw a glimmer of light off a familiar copper ring as he offered his hand to her. "Pleasure to meet you," Aloth said quietly, "I'm Engferth."

Kai remembered suddenly, as clearly as if it was one of her Watcher visions. A boring party and a very bad library. A gangly boy with a large book, small and trying to make himself smaller. And her, an inelegant bundle of hair and spite, angry at the world and her perceived place in it.

Kai grinned wickedly as she slid her hand into his. "Call me Emmethrien," she murmured.

She watched the realization dawn on her face before he schooled his expression back to bland interest. He took two large steps backward; the set of his shoulders said "Engferth" was somewhere between nervous and uncomfortable, but the look in his eyes said Aloth was anything but.

The leader—Vanessa? something like that—was talking to Kai again and she tore her eyes away from Aloth and back to the mission at hand. They'd have time later.

She glanced back at him briefly and Iselmyr winked at her, grin sharp and full of promise. Kai resolutely refused to look back at him until their work was done.

It was going to be a long day.

\-------

 

+1.

It was three days before they had a moment to themselves, without Edér's well-meaning meddling or enemies to fight or gods in giant adra statues.

Aloth closed the door to the small, cluttered cabin on _The Defiant_ and leaned against it. Kai stood near her desk, trying not to fidget. They stared at each other. 

The silence pressed in, heavy and unfamiliar.

Watching this closely, Kai could see the exact moment that Iselmyr got tired of their reticence. A small shift in the set of his shoulders, in the shape of his smile, in the ease of movement as he stormed across the room and pulled her into a searing, desperate kiss.

He was solid and warm in her arms and he smelled like magic and vanilla and the sea and he was _real_. He was real and he was _here_ and she clung to him like a lifeline.

She tugged at the endless laces on his armor. She wanted to get him in bed, spend a few days wrapped up in each other until her skin remembered what it felt like against his, but his armor was somehow more complicated than it used to be.

Iselmyr's thoughts clearly aligned with Kai's, her hands finding their way under her tunic to press hot and needy against bare skin, but Aloth's kisses remained gentle and unhurried and _maddening_. She whined in the back of her throat, but he only chuckled and pulled away.

"Relax," he said, as if it wasn't the most hypocritical thing he'd ever said to anyone. "We have time. I'm not going anywhere." He held her gaze, composed as always in the face of her restlessness, and said again, "I'm here to stay. I swear."

Kai deflated, all the fight leaving her at once. She hadn't known that's what this was about until he'd said it. She'd been worried he was going to leave again. She was tired of reintroductions.

Aloth pressed his forehead to hers. His hands were on her face, in her hair, on the scarred skin of her bare arms, restlessly cataloging changes from the last time they were together.

"I missed you," he breathed into the space between them, and she could hear both Aloth and Iselmyr in his voice.

"I should have gone with you," Kai whispered. At the same time Aloth said "I should have stayed at Caed Nua."

She huffed a laugh and finally pushed away from him to stand up straight again. "What matters is we're both here now. As it should be." She refused to falter from the affectionate smile spreading across his face, and barreled on, "We're _here_ , on my ship, in my quarters, and we're—"

She felt the familiar sensation of a cipher in her mind, like warm mist inside her skull. "We're being boarded by pirates." A second later, the alarm bell above deck started going off.

"Of course we are," Aloth said dryly. He offered her his arm. "I have missed your talent for finding trouble. Shall we?"

"This better be good," Kai muttered as she settled her hand into the crook of his elbow and followed him toward the door. "I had _plans_."

Aloth laughed aloud. "We'll have time, my dear. We'll burn a few pirates and then finish what we started."

His voice warmed her all the way to her toes. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder before hurrying up the stairs. She could see the enemy ship clearly even through the heavy rain – Principi colors, but no weapons drawn.

She arranged her expression in a way she hoped said Fearsome Captain Watcher, her smile wide and a little wild.

"Oh, and Aloth?" Kai said quietly, watching the Principi Captain and a grinning blue orlan board _The Defiant_. "Welcome home, darling."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so happy to step back into these characters' skin again. I hope to have some more Deadfire-centric stuff soon ;D I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> For those interested, Emmethrien is one of Kai's middle names.


End file.
